So one claim I’ve heard frequently while playing both Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone is that control decks are more skill intensive than mindless aggro decks. This thread is intended to settle the debate.
So in a recent thread I collected & published data on the average turn decks end the game. This stat also indicates how controlling a deck is. Now I know some players misunderstand what “control” is, but to clarify here it means the ability to successfully stall the game to a later turn where you can win more easily. The form that win condition takes is irrelevant to whether the deck controlled the board to make that win condition a reality — so in other words, a combo deck is a control deck if it uses lots of removal to get there.
With the definition of control out of the way, the next question is: how to measure skill cap? Answer: by comparing the winrate of an archetype at Top 1000 Legend, where the best players are, versus its winrate in Bronze through Gold. The more positive the difference, the more impact skill has on winrate, therefore the more skill intensive the deck is.
So we’re all ready to go now. When we take 38 current Standard archetypes and plot them, here’s the result:
https://imgur.com/gallery/MiW9okK
(Forum still won’t let me post images so if someone wants to include below I’d appreciate it)
As you can see, it’s all over the place. There is indeed a particularly brainless aggro deck in the format — that dot nearest the bottom left corner is Aggro Druid — but there isn’t really a standout Big Brain Control Deck. The two dots closest to the top right corner are Control Warrior and Control Priest, but they’re not as skill intensive as, say Quest Demon Hunter decks, one of which is that dot in the top left. And the least skill intensive decks in the format are actually Quest Priest and N’Zoth Shaman (sorry Kibler fans but it’s the truth).
Edit: I now realize you might be thinking “bro, Quest Priest isn’t even a real deck.” Fair enough. Here’s the same chart but minus the archetypes with a winrate below 50% in top 1000 Legend:
https://imgur.com/gallery/YhFKC7B
Now that deck closest to the top right corner is Fel Demon Hunter, but not much different from the first graph.
Indeed, although it’s not a very strong correlation (-0.15, to be precise and edit: -0.076 after removing the poorly performing archetypes), in general the more controlling a deck is, the less skill intensive it is. Although, because weak correlation, each deck should be considered independently instead of overgeneralizing.
In conclusion, I hope after reading this you’ll have the decency not to disparage players for choosing fast decks, because fast decks can be smart. Unless that deck is Aggro Druid. That deck is stupid.
PS for math nerds, my calculations can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W1uZbg8CP4UguGqyKbvgLsLR3B-qPwaQ8yT-kSJjc-c/edit?usp=drivesdk
I shot a barn on a unlabeled graph and picked the hypothesis that agreed with me, but yeah, As you go up a ladder, combo decks tend to have low winrates at low ranks, but high winrates as player’s improve.
Control decks people consider traditional is a huge mess of itself, and the only thing people can fight over is if A pirate warrior with a Barov in it is control, still aggro, or if armor makes a control deck, or if mana makes a control deck.
Also when combo players get better as well, and the control players get one shot or players naturally abandon decks that might not win, there could be a third factor of, as one climbs ranks, decks that are say, slow and die to hand damage, quickly realize it’s a meta where controlling the board doesn’t mean anything vs a quest mage, and just die to better garrote rogues and quest iglynoth lifesteal otk dhs.
I won’t deny that complex combo decks like Garrote rogue and quest lifesteal dhs can have a skill cap for sure, especially at the 100-1k legend ranks or tournament play. But considering these were made by players of the quest mage tribe (no offence, just pointing out a potential conflict of interests), i kinda disagree with The “The more controlling a deck is, the less skill intensive it is” hypothesis, at least for past decks in wild, as i think you’re over simplifying a meta where control is pretty much starved or dead to the point people have to spend time arguing whether or not “quest shaman was/wasn’t control”, or “Fireball on face for lethal is a control card”, or “Face hunter hitting someone to 0 hp is a control deck because when someone is 0 hp they can’t kill you and making prenerf questlock 0 hp is more effective than getting 20 armor and dying to 50 fatigue damage in a single turn anyways.”
Also not to jab or anything, but for the same metric the quest mage of choice had a negative curve didn’t it? Actually dropping in win rate as the rank’s improved. Not to disparage or anything, just pointing out a bit at the quest mage tribe when the meta is currently in starvation mode that at this point, we’re lucky if a control card deals 2 damage for 4 mana to handle the 2 mana 2/3 + 2/3 + 2/3 → Turn 3 Greybough + turn 4: More 0 mana taunts ± oracle or Composting + turn 5: Arbor up 5/4 boar + 5/4 mule + 5/4 + 6 drop the aggro taunt druid played 5 turns ago.
Hell… At this point, half of the ‘pirate warrior is control’ or ‘aggro taunt druid is control’ argument is arguing if a aggro deck is ‘control’ since aggro has better defensive elements than control honestly. Last i saw, the best thing control priest had going for it was a 36% winrate with it’s best matchup being itself at 50 50…
If your best matchup is losing to everything else 70% of the time and only beating yourself 50% of the time, it’s a dead deck, honestly. That’s why you can be a quest mage player main at 49.94% and still climb the ranks, with a +5-20% winrate margin on player execution, while if one wants to climb with a 36% winrate deck…
You better be good at overclocking a deck over 20-50% over it’s average winrate. Since… You’re trying to win with pure garbage that statisically will lose more rank… attempting to be used in tier 5… than 49.94% wr low tier 2 / tier 3 than 36% wr tier 5.
Thank you for this. This is an argument I’ve had with ccg players for many many years. I’m glad to see someone throw down the gauntlet and finally show how control decks aren’t necessarily big brain decks.
Got real tired of players giving me shyte because I’m an aggro player. Telling me I’m dumb and couldn’t play a “real” deck if I tried.
Edit: Realized that the key was a separate caption on the Imgur page, so here it is as well.
X axis (horizontal) is average game length in turns — the higher, the more controlling.
Y axis (vertical) is skill cap, measured by subtracting Bronze-Gold winrate from top 1000 Legend winrate.
38 Standard archetypes plotted.
I don’t have access to data on what was, but to what is. And certainly not to what will be. If you haven’t heard it before, best you hear it from me now: correlation does not imply causation. Even right now Fel Demon Hunter is a high skill cap control deck with a Yogg-Saron style finisher that goes against the trend of the correlation I was pointing out. Because it’s not a strong correlation.
We might, in the future, see a renaissance of high skill cap control decks. It’s just that that time is not now.
In my analysis I didn’t run across a single Aggro Druid that had an average game length greater than 7.0, when 6.5 is as fast as things get. It might be accurate to say that there are Aggro Druid lists tuned to play the control deck in the event of a mirror match, or against other aggro decks, but outside of that rather limited context no, no, Aggro Druid isn’t a control deck.
Now as far as Quest Warrior goes, HSReplay considers two separate Quest Warrior archetypes, Quest Warrior and Quest Control Warrior. It’s not a trivial difference — we’re talking about average game lengths of 7.5 versus average game lengths of 9.5. And Quest Control Warrior is definitely a higher skill cap deck than Quest Warrior, but that’s kinda like being a higher skill cap than Aggro Druid — it’s like being proud you’re smarter than an idiot.
Quick aside — I don’t get why they have separate archetypes for Elemental Shaman and Aggro Elemental Shaman. By “Aggro” all they mean is “runs Doomhammer” and because Doomhammer is a 5 cost card there is barely any difference in average game length between the two archetypes. Aggro Elemental Shaman isn’t even really fast it’s like midrange in this speed meta IMHO just like Elemental Shaman. I mean, if the archetype title was “Doomhammer Elemental Shaman” then okay good name, I’ll make sure to pack some sneks. Okay, rant over.
I’m very glad you’re happy with the results, but I do want you to know I would have posted them whichever way they went. If it was a positive correlation, I would have posted that.
I am more of a combo/control player myself, but if you’re interested it seems that non-Quest Zoo Warlock and Face Hunter are the thinking man’s (or woman’s) aggro in the current Standard, provided you don’t enjoy combo.
I can’t believe I just said Face Hunter is a thinking man’s deck but that just happened. Yep. Data.
interesting. i’m much more interested though in whether control decks are more fun intensive. i already know the answer. as far as this threads topic it’s obvious that mindless aggro decks are less fun than other decks. that’s the real issue. some people only play mindless aggro decks which results in boring and stale gameplay. those people are often the type that only care about winning and so they don’t play and NEVER create their own decks. that would be crazy. curbstomps galore you know. what kind of imbecile plays video games for fun? < sarcasm
The irony of this thread is the data is really barely represented, with a apparent -0.15-0.076 correlation. The data is completely unlabeled, but if the top right two values are the values listed at +10% and +12%, the whole argument might be that a faster +14% combo deck like fel DH or Garrote rogue have higher skillcaps than a +12% control.
Therefore, the op, a quest mage, is saying that control decks aren’t much smarter than a idiot, because they don’t improve much as a garrote rogue or fel dh on a completely unlabeled graph that… in true… Time conserving manner, is… completely unlabeled… Therefore making it completely impossible for any third party to even check what the decks even originally were in a completely scientific manner.
Look, now im not saying having someone actually try to use data on the forums vs ‘too long, didn’t read’, isn’t a bad approach.
You’re like one of the only other person on this fourms that types like longer than 2 sentences, even if it’s of a opposing viewpoint from quest mage vs control… And it’s being used to call Face hunter… “the thinking man’s deck”… on… a completely unlabeled chart that… in true 400 iq internet superiority… had the foresight to… include 0 labels, so all us unenlightened players could only stare at a graph that could have been labeled in 2 minutes and go, “gee, i sure wonder which of the completely unlabeled 38 points that point could be”
You state it yourself, Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but your graph, if you’re using control as the top two points with apparent +8-10% winrate for at least… What the top right 2 points appear to be, (We’re staring at a completely unlabeled graph here.).
It seems your own data might not even agree with your own data, if the top right two points are indicating +8-10% winrate for control. And if anything, what you’re comparing wouldn’t be the skill cap on a deck, but instead the difference between skill floor vs skill ceiling.
Now, no one here is denying that Garrote rogue has a very high skill floor and ceiling. If anyone were to pick some of the most complicated decks to play, you could get the biggest gaps at a low playrate by taking a deck with horrible performance if one doesn’t pass the skill floor. (Etc: Garrote rogue getting a 38-44% winrate at most ranks, ditto with iglynoth dh), but you can also have decks with high skillcaps, that just don’t perform as awful. Take for instance, a past rank #47 handlock vs a rank #74 garrote rogue of days past.
If you look at the top end, a bottom floor handlock might need to only play cards and hit face, while a low end garrote rogue just flops around, flails, doesn’t know how to assemble combo and die. But at a high level, a high rank handlock might still not have been as complicated necessarily as a high rank garrote rogue, but the player itself might be doing everything from A: Knowing every opponent matchup, B: Counting own deck mechanics, such as cards to duplicate with tamsin, potential opponent cards, as well as hp management, planning 10 cards or fatigue prenerf 4 turns in advance for bristleback turns, or all sorts of nonsense while the garrote rogue learns their own combo and the same as well.
The argument, as presented, from the quest mage tribe, seems to be, Control = braindead/idiot deck, because it doesn’t have as much as a 38% wr to 50.5% or whatever gap like garrote rogue / fel dh, and it only has a +8-10% wr.
But this is a meta where control decks just by default, autodie vs quest mage / past handlock, or just… aoe aggro… Basically you’re looking at the skill cap of “Does this auto win, or auto die or not?” and picking that because the skill curve doesn’t improve as much as garrote rogue / fel otk dh, it’s not as good or not.
I feel like there are some potential logical fallacies here, but if i offended anyone, it was never to state that aggro players were brainless. Just Quest mage and quest priest are literally decks that tell you what to do. Play a specific card of 2-4 mana or arcane/frost/fire school. For the most part, being a free thinking does almost 0 conductive to these decks. I can’t say i’m not shocked but not surprised if quest priest, a deck whose winrate would literally revolve around “did you draw the 7/8 cost card or not? Yes, you maybe win if you didn’t autolose anyways, No. Well grats, you autolose anywyas” didn’t have good curves.
To point out fallacies, you’d have to also be aware of the texas sharpshooter fallacy, where one starts with a conclusion. First, and then data second. Like “Control players aren’t as smart as they think, face hunters and quest mages are smarter”.
You say it yourself that correlation does not equal causation, but there are many charts with just as misleading data. stronger correlations of 0.97 correlations for examples as (intentionally) humorous as Margarine consumption plotted against divorce rates in Maine vs the -0.15 of yours.
By misleading data alone, the misleading data can just as easily be interpreted as 6x stronger evidence, but that misses the point. When we want to see something, we tend to find stuff that agrees with us. This site has some hillarious examples, and it’s well worth a watch, but i think some of the data is misleading.
Now, there certainly aren’t cases where correlation doesn’t give hints. Cigarettes smoked vs Lung cancer rates and others are probably a good one. But it just seems like a graph that’s scattered but just seems to be comparing skill gaps vs skill floors.
Nobody is saying that traditional combo doesn’t improve with skill as well, just quest mage is one of those own decks who had it’s winrate decrease as it climbed in rank, and just like quest priest, it’s a deck that tells you what to do just by very design.
Nobody is saying that playing XYZ deck makes worse at life, just that picking from a 2, 3, or 4 cost card vs 1-2x playable fire, arcane, and frost cards, and then playing a card that makes your opponent explode and die within 2 turns of completing quest is iffy design.
Then again, data or not, i’m probably arguing not with data first, but hypothesis first. With a unlabeled, unreadable graph that measures skill caps vs skill floors that by design will print decks players reach 35% winrates with at bronze and 50% winrates at legend as the highest by very design. It’s hard not to feel like the data is unintentionally obscured, but it seems absurd to try and argue with a graph that… one didn’t even label… to prove… one’s intellect.
…
(Why am i even spending all this time on a unlabeled fourm post? When we’ll both, probably stick to the stances we already have, skim through the other, and stick with our side, since the last time i agreed with someone on the internet that I liked quest shaman, but quest mage didn’t need a nerf… I got nerfed twice, and they didn’t?
Yeah… that was fun just saying perpetual flame probably was a bit undercosted at 1, but could be 2 mana fine, but quest mage which held handlock at the time, didn’t need any extra nerfs, and they agreed, and nerfed quest shaman twice ‘to save control’ when… it was like the only board controlling, aggro beating decks and quest mage none until now.
Now whenever i play a deck, and see a entire archetype dead since ‘a few players didn’t like playing against it, and it was 50.1% winrate, so we nerfed it to 36%’, and getting nerfed like 8 times in a row while being told to just ‘deal’ with it, often times by the very quest mage players of the time, rerolling. It’s hard not to feel like the kid who gets coal for christmas every time his brother gets two BMXes, and then crying 1 got taken away going "Nobody suffers through christmas as much as me. They haven’t lost a BMX when [They never even got one in the first place, while they had 7].
It also doesn’t help if one just doesn’t get much sastifaction from playing archetypes. Like, i have a itch, i love reactive plays and board controlling decks, i also loved combo that can dump pieces to survive, and homebrewed deck creativity and lots of vast variety.
I spend the majority of my time watching priest get nerfed since ‘players didn’t enjoy it’, even when it was 50% winrate, being removed literally at one point (the time raza was removed), as well as people who never played wild, deciding that they know best for wild, and it should be a dumpster. So many of my hours are watching modes i enjoy get neglected, trolled by official devs on twitter, and ‘don’t know the suffering of IT’S NOT 50% WR, IT’S 49.94% WINRATE! decks’ by mage when at times, priest during seedlock literally tracked dropping from 50-60% wild winrate to literally 9% priest winrate vs the questlock’s own wild trackers over like… 13000 games…
And im just like… One thing that’s about a fifth of what happens to priest all the time finally happens to mage, while they get a 80% refund on their deck while i got a 10k dust deck f2p potentially die with 0 refund to power creep…
And they’re… throwing a riot over losing 1 spell power, or… spending 1 mana on a incanter’s flow when it had a 70% t2 drawn winrate on launch…
Now im arguing with a unlabeled post, knowing probably a full 10-30% of this message will be read, at best, skimmed through, and ignored, while both of us are likely to sit in our tribal huts since the last time i reached out, my deck got nerfed twice for 50.1% winrate, while quest mage, massively unpopular at the time, got defended by me (then) and passed, and then started having some of it’s players argue control players were ‘idiots’. While quest mage had a negative skill cap…
And you know what, i’ll agree. It was stupid for me to expect anything back. Mage can get balanced and treated fairly like the rest of the classes. Most other classes actually get balanced regularly more, and it’s not a outlier for most classes to see 1-2 tunes a cycle.
Quest mages got their deck to last 3x longer than quest shaman, with half the investment, and will get a 80% vs 40% refund vs quest shaman. Their -1 spell power nerf is already in the patch notes. It’s time to move on. Their life will continue, and so will mine. It’s not discrimination to be treated the same as everyone else.
It’s literally the definition of equality for 2 nerf mage to see just as many balance changes as any other 4 nerf or so warlock, 2-3 nerf shaman, or any other class really.
Its interesting but there is something you forgot to mention. One of the most skill intensive deck in the current ladder is garrote rogue, and its usually end game by turn7/8 which is earlier than other hard control deck. though it is a control deck, as its aim to stall the game till it can perform it combo.
There are a WHOLE BUNCH of intangibles to playing control that the graph you are using doesn’t account for. Control decks require on average 5-6x more decision making into the future as opposed to any straight face deck. Hell even constructing a control style deck requires more time and testing as opposed to a straight deck of aggression.
That doesn’t mean I think less of aggro decks in general. I play aggro many times. The only real decisions i am doing that are intense is the math of how much dmg is left to do for the win versus my existing+potential and what i need to finish with. Once you make that calculation you can decide on trading, face or a combination of both.
Yes. And a -.15 correlation is weak. It’s very close to a zero correlation. But even a zero correlation (and this is a bit more than that) disproves what I’ve heard so many times, that aggro is brainless and control is skill.
As far as labels go, try following the link. I kinda labeled in the description of the image, which wasn’t copied over.
This is either a ridiculous straw man or your reading comprehension is terrible. I’ve explicitly pointed out an example of a high skill cap control deck in the format (Fel DH).
I’m not reading that entire wall of text but those are my responses from skimming it.
Because feelings make people stupid.
Agree, although there are others with even higher skill cap.
Disagree. Garrote Rogue typically rather light removal and primarily relies on the principle that a fast offense is the best defense. I’d say it’s bit less aggressive/more controlling than Anacondra Druid but it’s still quite aggressive. It isn’t a control deck.
Its fits your description though. Garrote rogue never win by offense, its win by stalling the game to turn 7 till the deck is empty, the combo piece in hands and enough mana is available.
Similarly, Anacondra Druid is a combo control deck. Its aim to stall the game till it can ramp , cast alignment, then create a giant board and lock you out of answers with another alignment.
According to Logic™,
(Doctor Evil air quotes with fingers)
“Aggro” Druid is a board control deck. It’s aim is to prevent the opponent from winning until it can assemble lethal damage and claim the win.
How do you describe a deck who stacks armor, put a massive board and limit your option to one card with the second alignment? Not to mention its locks you out of discovered cards and quest rewards.
But, when you dont account for D4-1, the most competitive bracket outside of top 2-500 (not 1K), your results are flawed.
D4-1 is the most competitive bracket outside of the top of the top, 500+
I know no stats exist for that particular bracket, but without considering D4-1, your conclusion is significantly flawed. Thats where the action happens!
This is dishonest representation of honest data at it’s best, your whole argument is based off of Texas sharpshooter fallacy, where you plot a unlabeled chart no one can read the archetypes of, declare a conclusion you agree with, ignore your own argument, and declare yourself the winner, once again, with a correlation statistically 6x weaker than the frivolously misleading 0.97 correlation link Between Mozzarella cheese consumption per Capital and Earthquakes in brazil.
You constantly rewrite everything to agree with you, even when the data is presented poorly or questionable at best. The label itself linked is poorly represented, and you don’t even admit to reading any of anyone else’s conversation.
Once again it’s the hearthstone video game fourms, not a doctorate thesis degree, but if this is what it takes to declare one high iq these days, by shouting out "i am smart, I AM SMART!’ over and over, followed by ‘NO READ! READ HURT BRAIN!’, then yeah. You’re the high pinnacle of of a life form complicated enough to make logical fallacies to agree with your own opinion over a random graph.
We were taught that correlation has to be stronger than 0.5 (random chance) to have any meaningful correlation.
Your own mained deck, quest mage, has a negative skill correlation between rank and win percent, You’ve also bizzarely renamed combo to control in your edits, making almost no sense. It also makes no factor to consider that winrates also revolve around high skill cap metas, where players, naturally by design, get better at playing around aoe that board control decks use, while combo players by nature, become more consistent at executing combos the longer they play it. You fail to notice the implications that you are not rating the deck by the skill caps or decisions a deck can offer, but how likely they are just to die to a otk that comes out the later a game lasts. At which point legend combo decks such as Garrote rogue, as well as fel DH come out.
Your own assumptions narrow a target too simplified to account for how decks interact with each other in a meta while you play a deck that ignores the curve and violates it’s very own principles. You are declaring yourself to have a superior intellect, because you do not fully grasp certain concepts, and instead have made a graph not of skill caps, but of skill floors, where decks players who do not understand fully, fail easily with. This is like Sc2 coop all over, where many players declared the easily to fail or lose commanders. (Such as raynor, who could easily be failed with by a new player, but easily manuevered with mechanics that peaked at micro troops, press t to stim), capped. While speedrunners chose players such as abathur with advanced knowledge of the game, in order to reach some of the highest levels the game could offer.
In other words, while there is certainly truth that Garrote rogue and iglynoth otk dh are certainly combo decks that improve once one passes a floor, you have mostly just created a graph of the easiest decks to fail with, or a chart of skill floors.
While there can be some value in a properly graphed version of this, all you’ve really done is created is a chart that doesn’t show skill cap, but skill floors caps to declare face hunter the thinking man’s deck.
The fact that it seems like the poster ignores differing opinions, and only agree to the ones that agree with their own is just icing on the cake really of what one should expect on the fourms. Even the people who can type more than 1 paragraph don’t seem to be able to read much more than one either. Honest arguments appear to be a waste of time, most players are concerned with whatever honest or dishonest arguments keeps their decks unnerfed as no one wants to be the next in line to go. The nerf patch data is already set, and quest mage will have gotten 2 nerfs to the 3 of shaman and however many Warlock got while still remaining several tier 1 series in a row.
